A Difficult Fall

Part of the reason I stopped blogging was that I was experiencing a difficult fall.  In the past, I likely would have blogged more as a way to sort through all the difficulties.  This past fall a lot was happening, a lot changing.  I actually stopped writing for a while.  There was too much to process.  Writing didn't help, as it usually does, so I stopped.  I turned inward and relied on some good friends to help me sort everything out.  I focused as much as I could on my family and kept moving.  I'd like to say that the difficult things I was experiencing--or more accurately, that my family was experiencing--have passed.  In some ways, they have.  In other ways, we're still sorting through these experiences.  I'm finally in a place in which I feel better prepared to write, in which I feel that writing will help.  That is, primarily, why I'm back. 

I also feel as though my reasons for blogging have changed.  I'm less interested in finding a community than I once was.  I will likely continue to tag my posts as I write them, more out of habit than anything else, but I'm not as concerned with how others will respond to my thoughts.  That begs the question: why blog, as it is, ostensibly, public?  The answer is that blogging is a form of journalling for me, although I recognize it is a public journal.  I could easily just write in a journal, even one I create on my computer, which I occasionally do.  I have returned to blogging because the kind of writing I do here feels different.  I'm not sure I can explain it in more depth than that, and I'm not sure I want to.  The writing, this time, is more out of necessity, out of my need to put things down in a tangible way, as I process my thoughts and experiences. 

A Return, of Sorts

I haven't written here in almost four months.  I haven't felt the need to write for a variety of reasons.  For the last few days I have been thinking about this blog and the space it gave me to journal about certain aspects of my life.  I often still feel the need to journal, but I haven't felt the need to journal publicly for a while.  I started this blog almost eight years ago, when I was pregnant with my first child.  I wanted a space in which I could explore all the changes I was experiencing, and this space was very, very useful for that.  In fact, this space helped to keep me sane during three pregnancies, writing and defending a dissertation, an international move, and many family issues, among other things.  I discovered some good friends through this blog, and I maintained strong connections with others because of this blog.  For the past year or so, blogging started to feel like a chore.  I was blogging out of obligation rather than out of a desire to write or to connect with people.  I didn't want to write out of obligation--I already do quite a lot of writing out of obligation.  I wanted this space to be a positive space, even if I used it to rant occasionally.  This is all to explain why I stopped blogging.

I am going to start blogging again, I think.  I may be changing some things, including the blog's name.  I'm no longer as interested in recording my experiences of being an "academic mother," which is not to say that I won't be using this space to write about those experiences.  I just no longer see that as the primary thing I want to write about here.  For now, I think my posts will be more personal, more about my journey as a parent and as a person.  At least that is how I feel right now. 

To blog or not to blog

Currently I am in the midst of departmental drama, drama that affects the conversion of my position to tenure track.  As the drama has become more pronounced, I've refrained from blogging about it.  I try to remain as anonymous as possible, but I think it is likely easy to figure out who I am in real life.  So I avoid writing about things that could offend anyone or could reveal too much about my real identity.  But I'm finding I really want to write about the drama, yet I continue to hold back.  That is the question I'm struggling with today while I try to revise a paper for publication.  Do I blog, or do I keep quiet?

Readers

I seem to have lost a lot of readers since I renamed my blog.  I'm apparently not tagging posts as well as I was either.  I'm trying to decide if I actually care about that.

More on Blogging and Life

There were so many great comments on my last post that I decided to write a new post rather than just respond to the comments.

Here are some thoughts.  And I'm going to stop referring to Archer (see previous post) in the third person.  It's annoying to write, and I imagine it is annoying to read.

• Archer didn't tell me to take down the "deleted post."  When I realized how upset he was, I offered.  He thought about it for a while, and then asked me to take it down.  When he saw my reaction, which as I indicated before, I was totally unprepared for, he immediately changed his mind.  He stood over my shoulder as I took it down and asked me to leave it up.  It was important to me that I keep my word though, so I took it down.
• Since I've deleted the post, I can't go back and reread it to tell if it was about my own failings, as Anastasia suggested.  I do know I wrote that I was uncomfortable with my feelings and that I do feel like some of the feelings stem from my own insecurities.  
• After leaving the situation alone for a while, Archer and I talked again at length.  I now understand that he wasn't mad at my post.  He was upset that I wrote before he and I had really discussed it.  While that makes sense to me, I still don't feel like I did anything wrong.  I explained to him (again) that I often blog in an attempt to process thoughts and feelings before I talk those feelings out.  In lots of cases, it helps me to blog as I don't totally lose my cool about something that isn't worth losing my cool over (see every post I've ever written about Yetta, Pita, and my sister).  In this particular case, I didn't want to be jealous, so I wrote about why I was jealous before we talked about it.
• It also seems that the some of the comments were what made him the most angry.  I pointed out that I have no control over what people comment, and that comments are a part of the blogging process.  
• Archer has apologized.  In fact, he's done a lot of apologizing over the past few days as we both process the entire situation more.  He now realizes that he didn't handle the situation with his grad student very well.  He explained his thinking behind the process, and while I'm still bothered by it all, I see his logic (I won't share his logic though; that's his story to tell, not mine.).  I also don't believe he had any intention of making me jealous.  But I also don't think that he was thinking of me or of us when he was spending so much time with the GS, which he admitted.  He has also admitted that he's not great at balancing work and home and that he becomes consumed by work really easily.  He has instituted some house rules to make sure things like this never happen again.  
• I've explained my changed feelings about blogging to him.  When I told him I was contemplating no longer blogging, Archer went silent.  He told me that he realizes how important this is to me.  He said he was very sorry that his actions changed my view of blogging.  He has urged me to continue blogging.  In fact, every time I've been at the computer to check email or steal a few moments of work in the past few days he has said to the boys, "Let's leave Mommy alone.  She needs some time to herself."  Ordinarily I would assume he was just trying to help me find a moment or two to finish a thought, but I think he was trying to tell me that he knows my blogging has value for me.  That means a lot to me.

So where does this leave me and my blog?  I will keep blogging for now.  Archer rarely reads my blog (he was prompted to on this fateful day by a passing comment a friend made in an email she sent to both of us, a comment that had absolutely nothing to do with the post in question).  I am reassured that Archer now has some understanding of how important blogging is to me, but I don't think I'll be comfortable talking to him about my blog or my bloggy friends for awhile.  

I also now realize that adjusting to life in CU Land has been much more difficult on on both Archer and me than I realized.  While we've made some friends, we don't have the network we had in the States.  I've come to rely on my blog as a way to maintain connections with people, even though some of the people I stay connected to I don't know in real life.  I also value the community I've become a part of through blogging.  I'm not willing to give that up, especially not when there is still so much uncertainty in our lives because of the job market and academia in general.  I don't know if we're going to be in CU Land next August, but I do know I can open up my laptop, write a post about anything, and start a conversation with people whose opinions I respect and value.  It also enables me to have conversations with dear friends that I don't get to see as often as I'd like.  Frankly, this blog and the friendships I've made through it brings me a lot of comfort.  It helps me feel a little less alone.  It also gives me a space to talk about things, like not always liking CU Land or being lonely, that I don't necessarily want to talk about with Archer because I don't want his feelings about CU Land to be completely influenced by my feelings.

As everyone who commented on the previous post stated, this is a blog for me and one that is mostly about me.  That is why I've renamed the blog.  This is a name that feels more appropriate to the kind of blogging I do now.

Thanks for all the support.  I'm not going anywhere anytime soon.

Blogging

I've been blogging now for almost 4 years.  I started this blog, which I renamed today, when I was about 6 or 7 months pregnant with Wild Man, who is now 3 years and 9 months old.  My life has changed a lot.  I started this blog as a way to explore and chronicle some of the changes I was facing at that particular moment in my life.  Along the way, I've used the blog as a journal, albeit a public one.  This blog has enabled me to explore, to vent, and to record my thoughts and feelings, among other things.  Along the way, I've made some friends and been able to keep in touch with others.  Some months I post a lot, and others I rarely post at all.  I must admit I've never really thought about what this blog meant to me until this week.

Last week I wrote a post that upset someone I love very much, and in an attempt to make that person feel better, I offered to take the post down.  When this person took me up on that offer, I had no idea that I would have such a visceral reaction, but I did.  I sobbed as I took down the post.  I felt like I was ripping a page out of my journal, a journal that I actually reread with some frequency to try to learn about myself.  It seems in the course of the past 4 years blogging has become central to my identity in a way that I couldn't have anticipated and in a way that I'm not entirely sure I'm comfortable with.

On some level, it does seem odd to me that I now feel like I need to blog.  I often put really private thoughts out into the world, and while I'm not usually seeking out feedback, I do find some comfort in knowing that someone, somewhere, even if that someone is a person I've never met and never will meet, reads and takes the time to comment on my thoughts.  I have long accepted the reality that blogging means I have to deal with comments I don't agree with or with people not fully understanding something I've written.  I've even pissed off perfect strangers a time or two, and I've also had dear friends misinterpret things I've said or take things I've said out of the context in which I intended them.  I have learned to live with that.  And while I do blog about the people in my life, I feel like this blog is primarily about me and my journey through life.  Blogging helps me stay self-aware.  It helps me process my thoughts and feelings (and now that I've used "my" and "me" so much I'm feeling more than a bit narcissistic).  I never thought that something I had written or the way that people had responded to something I had written would upset someone I love.  But it did.  As a result, my feelings about blogging have changed.

Blogging no longer feels as free as it did.  I've always self-censored in my feeble attempt to remain anonymous, but since most of my family members either don't access the internet or don't know what a blog is, I've never really worried about their reactions to anything I've written.  Now that I have inadvertently hurt someone, I'm unsure of how to proceed.  Do I keep writing and naively hope that I don't hurt this person again?  Do I change the nature of what I write, thus defeating one of the primary purposes of the blog?  Do stop blogging altogether?  Do I close this blog down and start a new one, in which I'm completely anonymous?  Do I tell this person that I'm sorry, but that I'm going to keep blogging because it is, after all, something that I do that I truly intend to be just for me (on some level, I'm really inclined to do this, but then, I also feel like this response is inherently disrespectful and dismissive of this individual's feelings)?  Or do I simply do my best to keep this person out of my blog altogether, something that is very difficult given the nature of our relationship?

In all honesty, I'm at a loss. I'm currently contemplating ways to continue blogging and to maintain this blog while achieving a greater sense of anonymity.  I'm honestly not sure that is possible or if that is even something that I want to do.  Ultimately I think I'll make some minor changes, including not discussing this blog at all outside the blogging world.  I hope that is enough to ease my anxiety and to make this person feel better about the fact that I now know I need to blog.